Lots of Rocks!

thurs | fri | sat | sun | mon | tues | wed | thurs2 | fri2 | sat2

Colorado was in our rear view mirror as we entered the darkness of utah. We hung a right at monticello and headed north up route 191 to tonight’s destination: moab. We checked into our motel on south main street (a really cool sleep inn, I swear!) and went to dinner at moab brewery. This place looked really cool, with all sorts of outdoors sports gear (kayaks, parasails, etc.) hanging from the high ceilings. It was also my third “local beer” tasting of the day, and unfortunately, the worst. I’m always a little leery when the beer names are too cutesy. Names like scorpion pale ale and lizard light ale say one thing to me: stay away! I started with a park city steamer, supposedly in the style of california (read: anchor) steam beers. Boring. Then I tried their flagship dead horse amber ale. Again, very weak. To top it off, the waitress and service were none too snappy. Overall, I’d give this place a C-. Oh well.

day 5: monday, october 16 — 330 miles
We had a nice breakfast at the hotel and made the short drive north to arches national park. Let me say that the scenery around moab is fantastic. Coming in at night, we couldn’t see anything. In the daytime, we are surrounded on all sides by sheer cliffs. Arches has some memorably spectacular rock formations (see my arches pics). We took the main touring roads through the park, making a beeline to the famous delicate arch and taking the mildly strenuous half mile hike to a viewing area (getting up to the arch itself is a much longer hike).

Soon enough, we were back on the road, heading farther north to the island in the sky section of canyonlands national park. This park has three distinct sections, none of which connect by road with the others. And because we had to make it down to monument valley for a 3:30 tour, my calculations said I had about 40 minutes to explore this large piece of land. I sometimes drive like a cab driver in new york city, and now I was in all my glory driving through this barren land. I got a few pictures of the green river overlook, saw lots of gorgeous canyons (see my canyonlands pics), and then headed south, back through moab and monticello, through bluff and mexican hat, and back once again into arizona . . .

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Out of arizona and into utah, our first stop was a trading post in the town of kanab. It turns out that this is “utah’s little hollywood”, and they even filmed "death valley days" here. Interesting. But we had bigger fish to fry.

Yes, soon enough, we were in bryce canyon national park, one of the jewels of the national parks. The park has one main road which is not a loop. So we first drove to the far southern end at rainbow point, with and elevation of 9,100 feet. It was cold up here! We also came across some nifty ravens who were just hanging out on the sidewalk and were not about to move for some tourists. After taking lots of pictures, we headed back up the road to all the overlooks, and even came across some bighorn and mule deer along the way (see my wildlife pics).

We had dinner and stayed overnight at the park’s bryce canyon lodge, where the temperature dipped into the low 20s outside. When you check in, they tell you the times for sunrise and sunset. It turns out that everyone wants to know this because that’s when you get the most dramatic pictures, with all kinds of shadows and bright oranges across the landscape. Despite this info, we somehow missed the sunset show.

day 7: wednesday, october 18 — 250 miles
Okay, we were not going to miss sunrise! We were up with the chickens and had a quick breakfast in the dining room. I liked the coffee, but they burned my gigantic bryceberry flapjacks (see my southwest food pics). We caught the spectacular sunrise in the bryce amphitheater from several different vantage points (see my bryce canyon pics).

After hitting the souvenir shops in and around bryce canyon, we were once again on the road and arrived shortly at zion national park. With bryce, you drive around the top of the canyon and look down, but in zion you're in the canyon and looking up. The sheer rock walls were fantastic. To get to the main loop road of the canyon, you first drive through a tunnel. A construction project here delayed everyone for a good half hour. Zion has had such traffic jams in recent years that they’ve instituted a shuttle bus system that you must take to visit the major sights. This slows down the quick shot tourist (me), since I like to get out of the car, take a few photos, and then move on. Well in zion, “moving on” meant waiting 5-7 minutes for the next shuttle. When you figure there are maybe 10 stops on the route, that adds a good hour or more to our visit. Nevertheless, I actually like zion a lot (see my zion pics).

Just outside of zion, there was a fenced in animal farm right in downtown springdale, with elk and other animals (see my wildlife pics). We drove to st. george where we picked up interstate 15 south, cutting across the far northwest corner of arizona and then into nevada . . .